Michigan School Shooter, 15, charged as adult on murder, terrorism - parents may also be charged

DaisyDay said:

I watched some of the trial testimony of Jennifer Crumbley's trial. What stands out to me is how neglected Ethan was. He wrote in his journal that he told his parents he was hearing voices but they wouldn't get him help. I really hope he gets the help he needs now.

I think Ethan's mother is guilty of gross child neglect, but I'm not convinced that involuntary manslaughter is justified. She knew her son was deeply troubled but did nothing to help him. She and her husband not only bought him the gun and ammo, they did NOT tell the school that he owned a gun. She refused his direct and indirect cries for help. What she failed to do has had horrific consequences, but .... I don't know.

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I feel much like you do. Those parents do seem guilty of neglect. Yet I think that school shares some accountability for the shooting. Like social media, accountability is being neglected for many purveyors of harm. At least this verdict should be a warning to other lackadaisical parents and perhaps decrease the number of school shootings.

I have no words left. Sickening how this terrorism continues to go on and on.

It’s an old post. There’s a reason why I recognized that name. My bad.

Estrid said:

So back in HK, no guns allowed so no more of that for me.

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It seems that this is an old thread so I don't know if you are still tracking it but I was curious.......

How often do mass shootings happen in South Korea per year? I had a hard time finding statistics. From what I did glean from the spotty online records, it seems to have happened about 4 times since 2014 two of them it seems were gang shootings. Of course, I could be wrong.

A couple more questions.........

Do you think that not having legal access to firearms has made it more difficult for teenagers or other mentally ill people to obtain the means to shoot anywhere from 5 to 20 innocent people at one time or in the case of the Las Vegas shooting, where 415 people were shot, 60 of them fatally?

In all due respect for your horrific ordeal (please believe I do not take that trauma or the right to defend yourself lightly). Would it be possible to defend oneself with non-lethal options like high-powered stun guns or sandbag rounds in a functional firearm? The most effective sandbag rounds are shotgun rounds so I know that wouldn't be practical to carry except in a bag.

I am not saying that you are wrong to defend yourself in the most efficient way possible but I'm sure you know that there are effective ways to defend oneself without taking the life of one's attacker. They have even advanced the technology of pepper spray and made it much more chemically potent with a larger tank, wider spray area, and spray under higher pressure in order to stop people from meters away?

Again, I don't want to discount the need to protect oneself even with lethal force if needs be. I'm just wondering if the cost (mass shootings and black market gun sales which allow for one gun for criminals to one gun for legitimate citizens. The sad thing is, at this point, there are so many guns out there in the USA that even if we banned personal use of firearms, then they would mostly be in the hands of criminals with citizens at their mercy. So it's hard for me to form an opinion that I can be sure of one way or the other.

This post is not aimed directly at you, I ask anyone on the board, how do we mitigate mass shootings without restricting access to guns and how do we protect ourselves from criminals without open access to guns? It seems that there is no compromise.

rturner76 said:

It seems that this is an old thread so I don't know if you are still tracking it but I was curious.......

How often do mass shootings happen in South Korea per year? I had a hard time finding statistics. From what I did glean from the spotty online records, it seems to have happened about 4 times since 2014 two of them it seems were gang shootings. Of course, I could be wrong.

A couple more questions.........

Do you think that not having legal access to firearms has made it more difficult for teenagers or other mentally ill people to obtain the means to shoot anywhere from 5 to 20 innocent people at one time or in the case of the Las Vegas shooting, where 415 people were shot, 60 of them fatally?

In all due respect for your horrific ordeal (please believe I do not take that trauma or the right to defend yourself lightly). Would it be possible to defend oneself with non-lethal options like high-powered stun guns or sandbag rounds in a functional firearm? The most effective sandbag rounds are shotgun rounds so I know that wouldn't be practical to carry except in a bag.

I am not saying that you are wrong to defend yourself in the most efficient way possible but I'm sure you know that there are effective ways to defend oneself without taking the life of one's attacker. They have even advanced the technology of pepper spray and made it much more chemically potent with a larger tank, wider spray area, and spray under higher pressure in order to stop people from meters away?

Again, I don't want to discount the need to protect oneself even with lethal force if needs be. I'm just wondering if the cost (mass shootings and black market gun sales which allow for one gun for criminals to one gun for legitimate citizens. The sad thing is, at this point, there are so many guns out there in the USA that even if we banned personal use of firearms, then they would mostly be in the hands of criminals with citizens at their mercy. So it's hard for me to form an opinion that I can be sure of one way or the other.

This post is not aimed directly at you, I ask anyone on the board, how do we mitigate mass shootings without restricting access to guns and how do we protect ourselves from criminals without open access to guns? It seems that there is no compromise.

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To directly answer your last question "how do we mitigate shootings without restricting access to firearms", simple answer "We don't".

As a nation, we've "picked our poison"

I think a lot of the conversations miss the mark when they attempt to rely on these kind of shooting statistics. Sounds silly at first glance, but hear me out...

It's all a matter of how people prioritize various risk calculations in society.

I think it's a case where the two opposing entities in the debate don't understand the mindset of the other, and so they argue with stats that the other faction, quite frankly, doesn't care about.

When you boil it down to a risk calculation perspective.

If you asked many gun owners....

Is the ability to have a gun (equalizer) at your disposal in the 1 in 75 chance you'll be the victim of attempted robbery or assault worth it, if it means your risk of getting shot by an armed person goes from 1 out of 90,000, to 1 out of 11,000

A large portion of them would say "absolutely, yes"

Truth be told, I'm of the mindset to a certain degree. While I favor more restrictions than the average gun owner (I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time), if you gave me the options above, I'd be inclined to take the risk trade-off.

Furthermore, that ship has already sailed in some regards. We're already an incredibly armed society. Those guns don't magically stop working with the passage of new legislation. At best, we'd notice a modest decrease in 20 years. Once everyone's already got them, many people don't want to be the only one without one, correct?

And the US has a cultural affinity for guns...simply trying what some other countries tried isn't always going to be a sure fire thing.

The example I've used before... Prohibition as a means of cutting down on alcohol related incidents worked great in Islamic countries. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have the lowest drunk driving rates in the world. It's easy when the majority of the people were of the mindset that they should avoid alcohol altogether. That same success wouldn't be repeatable in countries like Italy, France, UK, and Germany, where there's a deep cultural & historical attachment to Wine and Beer.

ThatRobGuy said:

Furthermore, that ship has already sailed in some regards. We're already an incredibly armed society. Those guns don't magically stop working with the passage of new legislation. At best, we'd notice a modest decrease in 20 years. Once everyone's already got them, many people don't want to be the only one without one, correct?

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Very true, very true, there are already enough firearms out there to arm every man, woman, and child in the nation so they aren't going anywhere, even if they are not allowed to be legally sold. I'm no expert on how to reduce gun violence but I would feel better if we just reduced the size of magazines available. Every time someone has to reload, there is an opportunity for a few seconds to get under cover, run away, or attempt to disarm the person. Still, I think that is more idealistic and wishful thinking. I really have no way to determine if even that would be effective.

Places like the UK and many places in Europe and Asia have those laws and have a minuscule amount of gun violence in their countries compared to the USA however, they didn't start off with about 400 million firearms already in circulation so it's a different scenario. Your post was full of solid logic and I think the idea of cleaning up the guns in the US is just a fantasy. So it's like "I better get mine because the next guy has one" is not a disordered thought. It's more likely disordered thinking to believe that we can stop the gun violence problem by simply banning them.

ThatRobGuy said:

The example I've used before... Prohibition as a means of cutting down on alcohol related incidents worked great in Islamic countries. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have the lowest drunk driving rates in the world.

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Exactly, trends need to be changed by society, not by just making more laws and they have some serious penalties in Saudi for bootlegging booze. It's a kingdom with no Constitution that I know about and they could do anything from whip you to cutting off a piece of your anatomy and they have the death penalty for more than just murder without the same appeal system we have. We have a gun owning culture in the USA and without a massive universal shift in thinning by the vast majority of citizens, that's not going to change.

Let me ask you this.......Knowing that I agree that it is impossible to remove guns from our society, can you think of any way that gun violence can be reduced significantly? The only thing that I can think of is either people on their own decide to properly secure their firearms thereby not letting them get into the hands of criminals or God forbid, their own mentally unstable children. I don't think the government has the resources nor the practical ability to properly regulate how people store their weapons. Seemingly the government's only resource would be to severely penalize people who allow their weapons to get into the wrong hands. Do you believe with the laws we have, there is any way to curb gun violence?

rturner76 said:

Let me ask you this.......Knowing that I agree that it is impossible to remove guns from our society, can you think of any way that gun violence can be reduced significantly? The only thing that I can think of is either people on their own decide to properly secure their firearms thereby not letting them get into the hands of criminals or God forbid, their own mentally unstable children. I don't think the government has the resources nor the practical ability to properly regulate how people store their weapons. Seemingly the government's only resource would be to severely penalize people who allow their weapons to get into the wrong hands. Do you believe with the laws we have, there is any way to curb gun violence?

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Significantly reduce in the short term? I don't see any pathway to that at the moment.

If we're willing to focus on the long term, I think the US adopting the Czech Republic model of gun control "moving forward" would be the most feasible. (again, we're not going to see much of a difference in the stats for the next 10 years, but could see a modest reduction in 20 years with a taper down from there...but as we all know, politicians are keen on being able to tout "look what I did in my term" with numbers to support it, that's not going to be an option for this topic)


I specifically mention the Czech Republic because, with regards to the developed world, they're the closest to the US in terms of having a cultural affinity for guns. They're the only ones I know besides us who have a constitutional provision for the right to bear arms, they enjoy guns (and are allowed to own AR's, they have shall-issue concealed carry permits, etc...), yet they've still been able to boast one of the lowest murder rates in the developed world.

They put more emphasis on "upstream vetting" of the individual, and fixate less on the types of guns and accessories.

Theirs is more of a "is the person sane, trained, and educated enough to be a firearm owner" and less of the "well, handguns are okay, but for those rifles, we want to restrict these types of magazines and attachments".

In all reality a sane trained and vetted person with an AR-15 concerns me less than a rando with a Glock who got it simply because they're over 21 and could pass a weak background check.

While there's no perfect "apples to apples" country with regards to the American cultural affinity for guns, the Czech Republic is a lot closer to us than nations like the UK or Canada. And thus far, theirs has been the closest I've seen to a "best of both worlds" approach.